Saturday, December 08, 2007

County Birding: Roseate Spoonbill

I took a break from studying for my finals to chase the Roseate Spoonbill being reported from Anaheim this weekend. I was afraid I missed my chance to see it, as after the first day there was a brief period of time where it was not being found, but then I got an email last night saying it had been seen, so this morning I waited to hear if it was being reported as I worked on an essay for one of my finals, and the instant I saw Joel Weintraub post Vic Leipzig's report, I dragged my boyfriend out of bed and got on the road.

I didn't have my camera with me, so here is Trude Hurd's gorgeous shot of the ROSP!

After a quick run to Starbucks to placate Drew, we marched out along the Santa Ana River to find the bird. We kept passing birders coming back from seeing the bird. As we rounded a bend, a group of birders came into view, and we scanned for the bird. It was behind a cement wall, and a photographer flushed it up. It circled out over the water, giving both Drew and I broadside views of it, before headed upriver and away, appearing to drop down at the very limits of our sight.

We walked out another 15 minutes to see if we could re-locate it, but it had either kept going, or hunkered down because we could not see it. I had to get back to go to an LSAT prep class, so we decided to be satisfied with our brief views of it, after all, it doesn't take long to get a look good enough to identify that bird! So hooray for another county bird, smack dab in the middle of finals =)